Typical surveillance systems that are used to secure buildings or borders about a secured area commonly include closed-circuit video cameras around the secured area, with concomitant power and signal cabling to video monitors for security personnel in attendance to observe video images for any changed circumstances. Additionally, lighting may be installed about the area, or more-expensive night-vision equipment may be required to facilitate nighttime surveillance. Appropriate alarms and corrective measures may be initiated upon observation of a video image of changed circumstances that prompt human analysis and manual responses. These tactics are commonly expensive for video cameras and lighting installations and for continuing labor expenses associated with continuous shifts of attendant personnel.
More sophisticated systems commonly rely upon image-analyzing software to respond to image changes and reject false intrusion events while segregating true intrusion events for controlling appropriate alarm responses. However, such sophisticated systems nevertheless commonly require permanent installations of sensors, lighting and cameras with associated power and cabling that inhibit rapid reconfiguration, and that increase vulnerability to breakdown due to severing of wiring and cabling, or to unreliable operations upon exposure to severe weather conditions.
In a wireless sensor network, it may be desirable at times to update the software code that runs on the individual units of the network. Since these networks may include perhaps hundreds of individual units, manually loading the code can be time consuming and labor intensive for a field support person going to each unit and via a portable processor transferring the new code to each unit and then having each unit restart with the new code.